“Scaffolded Learning for Code Writing Exercises”
Michael Ball, Akshit Dewan, Pamela Fox, Tommy Joseph, Anirudh Kothapalli, Roy Zhou (Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences)
Cohort 2021-2022
CS61A is the first required class in the CS major at Berkeley, and students often have a hard time coming up with a correct solution for the code writing exercises. To scaffold the learning journey and help students be more successful in code writing, we integrated Faded Parsons Problems into the labs and homework this semester. Faded Parsons Problems give students a way to rearrange provided blocks of code into the final solution and fill in blanks to complete the code. Their goal is to guide students toward the construction of an expert solution, so that they can more easily find a correct solution when confronted with a code writing exercise where they must write the code from scratch. We will present our analysis of how student performance was affected by the integration, survey results from students, and key learnings from the integration.